NEW DELHI: Enforcement Directorate On Thursday, he blamed the West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee Accusing him of obstructing an ongoing money laundering investigation, he claimed the search operations were carried out “in a peaceful and professional manner until the arrival of the Bengal CM” along with senior officials of the state police.In a statement, the ED said it was conducting searches at 10 premises, six in West Bengal and four in Delhi, under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act in connection with an alleged coal smuggling syndicate led by Anup Majee.
Also read: Mamata reaches I-PAC chief’s house and lashes out at Amit Shah; asks: “Is this Interior Minister the job?”The ED claimed that the proceedings were halted after Banerjee arrived at the residence of Pratik Jain, the I-PAC chief, accompanied by a large number of police personnel. “Mamata Banerjee entered the living quarters of Prateek Jain and took away important evidence, including physical documents and electronic devices,” the agency said. It further said that the chief minister’s convoy then drove to the I-PAC office from where “Banerjee, her aides and state police personnel forcibly took away physical documents and electronic evidence”.The agency said the investigation uncovered links between the coal smuggling network and hawala operators, with proceeds of crime running into tens of millions of rupees. One such hawala operator, the ED alleged, brokered transactions with Indrapac Consulting Private Limited (I-PAC), a political consulting firm associated with the Trinamool Congress.According to the ED, these actions resulted in obstruction of an ongoing investigation. The agency insisted that the searches were evidence-based, did not target any political establishment and had nothing to do with elections. “No party office was raided,” it said, adding that the operation was part of a routine crackdown on money laundering and was carried out strictly in accordance with legal safeguards.Earlier, Banerjee had denied the allegations and accused the central authority of trying to seize the TMC’s internal documents and election strategy. Speaking to reporters after visiting Jain’s residence and I-PAC office in Salt Lake, she said ED officials were seizing party documents, hard drives, laptops and mobile phones containing sensitive political data. “Is it the ED’s duty to collect data on political parties?” she asked, describing the searches as politically motivated and unconstitutional.Banerjee launched a sharp attack on the BJP leadership, accusing Union Home Minister Amit Shah of misusing central authorities to intimidate opposition parties. Claiming that the raid was a “political vendetta”, she alleged that the ED started the search early in the morning when no one was present in the office, allowing officials to access and copy election-related data.
